IMPASS: A Robot with Whegs

Dennis Hong
writes, "I am a professor in Mechanical Engineering at Virginia Tech
specializing in robot locomotion. Wanted to let you know about an
interesting article
on Discovery.com featuring one of our novel
locomotion robots for high mobility. The robot is named IMPASS,
which stands for Intelligent Mobility Platform with Active Spoke
System, uses rimless wheels with spokes designed to individually
lengthen and shorten according to its movement needs. It combines legs
and wheels into one hybrid vehicle that can scramble
over uneven courses and roll quickly over flat grades. Using
intelligent motion planning to coordinate the motion of the active
spokes, the actuated spoke wheels can also act like legs to climb
over large obstacles and follow the contour of uneven surfaces of the
terrain by making discrete contact with the ground as legged robots
do." For other
robots that use variants on the whegs concept see the Case Western Whegs robots, the
well-known RHex, and CANipede created
by Blueeyebop.